


One bird to another

by Fleur_de_Violette



Series: Whumptober (more like hurt/comfortober-november-december) 2020 [3]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Badass Raven, Death as a character, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Hurt Dick Grayson, Hurt/Comfort, Near Death Experiences, Whumptober 2020, magical healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27301429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fleur_de_Violette/pseuds/Fleur_de_Violette
Summary: Dick knows, with the certitude that exists only in dreams, that the thing after him is Death. Thankfully for him, there is another bird with them, one who won’t let Death take him without a fight.This is a continuation/side story to my story “Just human” but can be read alone.Whumptober day 15 – Magical healing
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Raven, Dick Grayson & Wally West
Series: Whumptober (more like hurt/comfortober-november-december) 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984960
Kudos: 53





	One bird to another

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there ! I’m still going. I hope you’ll like the story. I took some liberties on Raven’s power, but her characterization is mainly from the Teen Titans cartoon (except she’s a little older in this story). I hope this is not too far away from what you’re expecting. I love her very much.

Dick is drifting. 

Worst thing is, he doesn’t remember how and when he started drifting. He’s been with Bruce. Lost on an unknown planet. And now he's drifting. Floating.

He should be worried. He should fight the weak stream of water taking him away, and yet. 

He feels safe. There are so many things, so many people he’s leaving behind, but he will sleep. He will sleep and everything will be okay. 

A small voice in the back of his mind tell him it’s not. But it’s so small he quiets it. He’s floating. 

No. 

He’s sinking. 

Slowly, very slowly, he’s approaching the bottom of this ocean he can breathe in. And, in weird logic of dreams and near-death hallucinations, after the bottom of the ocean, there is air. 

Suddenly, he’s flying. 

He’s in between two trapezes, in the middle of the jump, except gravity never catches back to him, and he keeps flying. He can hear people cheering, eyes on him, and he never felt so alive. 

He decides to extend his wings and fly. 

He’s a Robin, he remembers, has always been, long before he knew Batman, long after others took the title. So, there is nothing weird about extending his wings and flying between the branches.

He flies for a while, chirping with joy, before he can feel the shadow of a hawk over him. 

This is Death. 

He’s never been so sure of anything in his entire life. The hawk is Death. He knows it with the certitude of a dying man.

And that’s when his fighting nature kicks in. He knows he can’t take Death up front, so he does what he always did. What his parents did for years before Death finally won. 

He dodges. He cheats Her. 

It works for a while, before, inevitably, Death closes up on him. He sees the claw, and he barely has time to think _sorry Bruce_ and then… 

And then another bird collides with Her, saving him. They fight in a furry of black feathers. The other bird is a crow, he thinks. 

No. Not exactly. 

It’s a raven.

The corvid looks at him and tells him, actually tells him, “Run. I’ll buy time. We birds should take care of each other.” 

There is nothing he can do beside trying to fly away as far as possible. And of course, that’s when gravity catches up with him and suddenly, he can’t fly. He doesn’t remember how. The raven and the hawk collide with him and the three of them are falling.

When he hits the ground, he’s human again. Grounded to the earth. Unable to fly away. Death is there too. She isn’t a hawk anymore, but She’s not exactly human either. 

Around him are two titanic black wings. He can’t see the feathers, the wings pitch black, without relief. They’re protecting him, enveloping him in a cocoon of warmness. He looks up to their holder, and, sure enough, he sees the visage of his friend. 

“It’s okay,” says Raven without looking at him, her eyes fixed on Death “you’re safe now. I’m here.” 

She stands up, and he regrets the wings, but her magic stays around him, like a blanket. Raven is upright between him and Death and he is reminded of how tall she is, despite being the smaller of the Titans. This is nothing physical. She’s got the presence of the Greek giants their team took the name from. 

“That’s my friend,” she says to Death, unwavering, “so back off.”

Death screams something inhuman, and Dick curls up, hands on his ears. But Raven stays calms and collected. She raises her hands and her powers run free, unleashed. This is a battle between two entities. The oldest one, only slightly younger than life itself, is the inevitable. The youngest is the girl who defeated destiny, who stopped the inevitable again, and again and again. The youngest is a Titan. 

And Dick… Dick doesn’t feel like a Titan right now. He feels small, lost in a word that isn’t his. And after all, Rae told him she would protect him, right? So, he can’t be in danger. 

* * *

Dick wakes up with a sharp breath. There is a sense of danger upon him, and he doesn’t remember exactly what he was doing. He was with Bruce, no… with Raven? He’s alone now, in a cot inside what looks like one the league biggest spaceships. He needs to move, to escape… something. A hawk he thinks, but that doesn’t make sense. He starts to get up and… 

His left leg is in agony, throbbing with every beat of his heart. He cries out, tries to curl up only to realize his neck is screaming at him, sending shockwaves for every slight movement or friction with his grown (and where is his Nightwing uniform?). 

He doesn’t have time to think more about it before a red blur enters into the room, positioning itself in front of him. Hands take his face. 

“Hey hey hey. You’re fine. You’re fine, ‘Wing. Just breath with me. Shit, I should never have left, I’m sorry.”

Dick blinks, mortified to feel tears on his cheeks, and the face of his best friend clears up. He tries to adjust his breathing with the speedster’s, to calm down. After a while, he manages to shake off some of the anxiety that comes with waking up injured in an unfamiliar environment. He raises his left hand to put it on the redhead’s face. 

“Wally?” He asks, wincing at the sound of his voice. Wally grimaces. 

“Yeah, it’s me, dude. Do you want some water?” 

He presents Dick a cup with a straw in it. Water seems heavenly, but Dick needs to ask something else first. 

“Bruce?” 

He doesn’t see any good reason Bruce wouldn’t be with him when he wakes up. Yet he’s still desperately absent and the reasons why, from his mentor being injured or worse to him not caring, abandoning Dick because of his mistakes, run into his head. Wally must see it because he’s squeezing his hand. 

“Rae helped him sleep and he hadn’t woken up yet.” When Dick doesn't calm down, he adds, “I swear Dick. I wouldn’t lie to you about this. You can see him as soon as we reach the watchtower.” 

“Where is Raven now?” 

Wally seems surprised, and more than a little worried at the question. He’s probably thinking Dick wants to rely on her powers to reduce pain, but that’s not it. There is something that happened with her, he can’t really put his hand on it. 

“She’s meditating, I think. I’m gonna go get her now.” 

Dick reaches out to his best friend’s arm. 

“No, it’s fine. It’s good.” 

Wally seems uneasy. 

“Are you sure?” 

Dick nods, finally taking the offered water and relaxing in the bed. Wally seems to relax too. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, he finds the courage to ask. 

“How long?” 

Wally grimaces. 

“It took us almost thirty hours to find you after you were hit. You drifted very far, very fast. That was terrifying. And when Supes brought you…” he shudders “it was a close call, Dick, way too close. You've been asleep for five hours, so you should probably sleep some more, too.” 

Dick closes his eyes. Wally is right. Now that the adrenaline wears off, he is tired, despite having just woken up. 

“Is everyone else fine?”

Wally laugh. 

“Yeah, they are. I’m pretty sure Donna is singlehandedly preventing half of the Titans to burst into your room right now in order to give us space.” 

Dick smiles fondly. 

“I had enough space for a lifetime. Let them in. It probably won’t stop me from sleeping anyway.” He feels himself pulled into the embrace of unconsciousness already. 

The next time he wakes up, Wally is still there, and he kept his promise. Bruce is sleeping next to him.

* * *

It’s a weird thing, Dick thinks as he limps into the living room, to see Raven in the manor. Not bad but weird nonetheless. She offered to keep healing the burns on his neck, her magic being the technique that was the less likely to scar. That wouldn’t be his first scar, but he would rather not have a remainder of the disaster of that trip on an unknown planet every time he looks at the mirror. 

He doesn’t know if this is a side effect of healing magic or if she’s doing it on purpose, but he often finds himself relaxing when she works, more often than not falling asleep and waking up after she’s finished. The fact that he’s still under a significant amount of meds doesn’t help. 

She’s currently drinking tea with Alfred, talking casually and this isn’t a friendship he would have imagined, but it makes sense, somehow. 

He sits up with them and accept gratefully the tea Alfred is offering him. He hopes it would clear a little the fog on his mind. 

“Rae, I need to ask you a question.” He needed for quite some time now. She encourages him to continue with a sign of her head. 

“When Superman brought me to the main ship, what happened?” 

She squints her eyes. 

“I provided first aid, and then let Dr Mid-Nite work on you.” She says, factual.

“Is that all?” 

She nods. 

“That’s all.” 

He’s got the feeling there is more. He’s got the feeling there she did way more than first aid. But if she doesn’t want to tell him, he won’t push. 

“Thank you.” He says simply. 

She takes a sip of her tea. Looks at him in the eyes. 

“Anytime. We birds must take care of each other.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked the story! Have a nice day!


End file.
